Phyllis Lyon, left, and Del Martin, who have been together for 51 years, embrace after their marriage at City Hall in 2004. They were the first legally married same-sex couple in San Francisco.

Photo: Liz Mangelsdorf, The Chronicle

Phyllis Lyon — half of the first same-sex couple to be married in San Francisco — stars in a new ad with Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former Mayor Gavin Newsom, who officiated, being released Tuesday.

Lyon and her late wife, Del Martin, were among more than 4,000 same-sex couples married at City Hall in 2004, before the state Supreme Court halted the weddings. The longtime lesbian rights activists were married at City Hall again — legally — in June 2008 by Newsom. Martin died two months later.

In the 30-second ad, titled “Phyllis,” Newsom, now the state’s lieutenant governor, and Lyon reminisce while looking at photos — and Chronicle headlines — from those heady days of the same-sex marriage movement.

“Well, it took courage. Well, it did, you know — you had to think about what was going to happen when everybody heard it,” Lyon tells Newsom as they sit next to each other in her home, holding hands. “But, it seemed like it was a better idea to let everybody hear it.”

Newsom’s campaign hopes the ad reinforces the notion that Newsom has the “courage” to take on controversial issues like same-sex marriage, universal health care and gun control. The ad is part of the Newsom campaign’s current “seven-figure” advertising buy. This spot will start running in the Bay Area, then branch out into other markets.

— Joe Garofoli

Using sex as a weapon: The political attack that many expected in California’s gubernatorial campaign against Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — calling them out for sexual affairs they had while in office — landed Monday.

The ad’s narrator states, “Powerful men are finally being held to account and punished for inappropriate sexual conduct with women over whom they exercised power.

“Gavin Newsom had such a sexual relationship with a woman on his mayoral staff. Antonio Villaraigosa did the same with a reporter assigned to cover him. Newsom and Villaraigosa think the rules shouldn’t apply to them. They don’t want punishment — they want a promotion.” The kicker: “Californians deserve better: John Cox for governor.”

The backstory: Cox is aiming at Villaraigosa because the two are virtually tied in the latest nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California poll, for second place behind Newsom. Only two candidates from the June 5 primary will advance to the general election.

However, it is questionable whether Restore Our Values has enough cash to ensure that the attack resonates. It has only $64,935 cash on hand and has raised only $106,005. That’s not much when it costs roughly $2 million to keep an ad on the air for a week in a major California market.

Plus it will be interesting to see if this attack resonates in the #MeToo era, given that voters seemed to have forgiven both men. Newsom was re-elected mayor of San Francisco nine months after news of his 2005 affair with his scheduler, who was the wife of his campaign manager, broke in February 2007. Voters subsequently elected him lieutenant governor twice. Villaraigosa was re-elected easily in 2009, two years after news of his affair broke.

There’s a bit of backstage GOP intrigue behind the pro-Cox group.

Its primary funder is Marin County businessman Ken Casey, who contributed $100,000 to the pro-Cox independent expenditure campaign through his company, Professional Investors Security Fund or PISF. Casey wasn’t always a pro-Cox. On April 5, PISF contributed $300,000 to Cox’s top GOP opponent, Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, for a campaign to oppose California’s gas tax.

Instead, according to Restore Our Values co-chairwoman Leigh Teece, Allen used the contribution to promote his own campaign as well as the anti-gas tax. That’s one reason why Casey is now a pro-Cox donor.

“We are concerned because Travis betrayed a donor and a friend,” Teece told The Chronicle Monday. Instead of spending the money on gathering signatures to get the anti-gas tax on the ballot, “Travis took that money and spent it on himself. Our group is about integrity. If he’s taking it from a donor and a friend, what’s he going to do as a governor?”

“That is an outright lie,” Allen told The Chronicle Monday. “If money dictated the outcome of races in California, then Meg Whitman would be governor of California. All of this is just another attempt by the crony pals of John Cox to cover his own inadequacies and record of failure.”

— Joe Garofoli

Newsom ad “false”: A nonpartisan fact-checker says part of gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom’s new TV ad, currently in heavy rotation, is false.

The 30-second ad, titled “First,” touts issues where Newsom staked out a position ahead of the political curve. The ad included the claim that Newsom was “the first to take on the National Rifle Association and win.”

The fact-checkers at Politifact California ruled that assertion is false.

“The claim, however, ignores major gun control measures passed by California politicians from U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein to former Los Angeles Mayors Tom Bradley and Antonio Villaraigosa, in the face of NRA opposition,” Politifact’s analysis concluded.

For example, Politifact points out that Feinstein, when she was mayor of San Francisco, beat back an NRA-supported recall in 1983. The attempted recall happened after Feinstein supported a failed statewide handgun ban.

And as senator, Feinstein was key in passing the federal assault weapons ban in 1994, which the NRA vehemently opposed.

A Newsom campaign spokesman told Politifact that the ad was trying to show he was the “first person in California history to propose and pass a statewide ballot measure strengthening gun safety laws.” A campaign spokesman told the fact-checker that the campaign didn’t intend to devalue previous accomplishments by other officeholders.

“While that’s helpful,” Politifact responded, “Politifact places ratings on the original statements, not revisions or clarifications. ... We rate the original claim as false.”

Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer, covering national and state politics. He has worked at The Chronicle since 2000 and in Bay Area journalism since 1992, when he left the Milwaukee Journal. He is the host of “It’s All Political,” The Chronicle’s political podcast. Catch it here: bit.ly/2LSAUjA

He has won numerous awards and covered everything from fashion to the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killings to two Olympic Games to his own vasectomy — which he discussed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” after being told he couldn’t say the word “balls” on the air. He regularly appears on Bay Area radio and TV talking politics and is available to entertain at bar mitzvahs and First Communions. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and a proud native of Pittsburgh. Go Steelers!